


Inkling

by Cluegirl



Series: Changelings [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Attempted Kidnapping, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Outdoor Sex, Rimming, abuse of medical powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-06
Updated: 2014-08-06
Packaged: 2018-02-12 02:37:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2092458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cluegirl/pseuds/Cluegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Enough!"  The doctor snapped, no trace of chummy comfort left in his voice as he shoved the hypospray at another of the nurses.  "We have orders!  MPs, get topside, now.  Hooper, get another fifty of Xyladine into the Captain.  Dacy and Roccio, prep the gurney.  Seames, wipe your goddamned face off and prep for blood draw."</p><p>"But Major, the muster-"</p><p>Steve felt the cuff on his right arm begin to tear, blood slicking his wrist against the metal's bite.<br/>The doctor rounded on his aide, teeth bared.  "Did. I. Stutter?"</p><p>Another one tried,  "Sir, the alphas will need-"</p><p>"The alphas will <i>fight</i>, Corporal,"  The doctor snatched the hypospray back. "Rut haze or no, they'll fight. That's what we keep them around for, now get that man unconscious, or I will-"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inkling

"Captain Rogers!"

Every man in the room was Omega. Every single one.

"Captain, you have to stop. We can't help you if you-"

Something smashed, brittle and furious on the concrete floor. Briefly, there was less weight on his injured left arm, but before Steve could scruff the reedy, pretty, far-too-close-to-his-heat smelling nurse off his chest, two more armored MPs grabbed him and wrestled his wrist toward the magnetic clamps that ringed the table. 

"Hold him still!" 

"Captain please, your arm needs sutures. The bone might be broken, we can't-"

"Get the damned hypospray over here!"

"Shit! His leg, hold his-"

"But sir, we've already given him-"

"Well double it, Corporal!"

"Shhh, Captain," the green eyed nurse leaned close, stroking his own throat, prodding that indecent heat-scent like a lilac-and-cotton-candy cloud out into the sterile air. Then he reached for Steve's face with delicate, reeking hands. "Shhh, baby, it'll all be okay..."

Steve heaved upward, smashed his forehead into that delicate nose. The nurse reeled back in a spray of blood and curses, then rolled off as Steve kicked his left leg free and thrust all his weight upward, away from the creaking steel table. Shouts. Someone screaming. He kicked one of the MPs, sent his helmet spinning to the wall. Drove his knee into another's kidneys, and then there was a jab in his bloodied shoulder, a hiss, a chemical smell and a wave of light-headedness cut through the clamor of the room. It barely took the edge off the thundering Red in Steve's blood.

"Captain Rogers, it's for your own protection." The doctor was speaking directly to him this time, sheltered behind the crowd of orderlies and MPs, but still close enough for the scent of him to loom -- children, cigars, gun oil; a commercial scent, available in shady catalogues. Add in a whiff of alpha, and he'd smell like someone's home. But not Steve's home. "We have to operate to find the bullet," he said, too calm for the tumult around him, "With your metabolism, there's a good chance we'll do more damage than-"

"Get! Off! Me!" Steve managed the words through his teeth. AIM was still out there. His team -- his pack -- was still topside, helping the tiny research base fight off their assault. He needed to be with them, protecting them, not tied down to a goddamned table in some underground surgery! Another thrash sent two orderlies sprawling, but not before the magnetic clamp bit tight around Steve's left ankle and knee. 

Fine. Leverage he could use. The table began to groan.

The doctor cursed, shot a glare at the nurse with the streaming nose. "Private, get your ass back up here, now!"

"Sir, the containment unit's being prepped at the launch bay," another nurse leaned close to whisper to the doctor, so quiet no one but Steve could have heard. "The General's transport is on its way, ETA fifteen minutes."

"I am not. Going. Anywhere!" Steve gritted, hauling against the restraints with every ounce of the fury boiling in his veins. He could feel the drugs they'd given him blurring the edges of things, throwing off his aim, fluttering his balance a little, but the rage on him was vaster by far than any peaceable chemistry.

The Doctor flicked a glance at him, the false calm shattering into alarm as he realized he'd been caught. Then annoyance closed over the expression -- more honest than any face the man had worn yet. "Get him calmed, Private," he snarled, rounding on the nurse who was holding a wad of towels to his bleeding nose. "You've got ten-"

Something rocked the room around them, percussive and low, staggering everything (and everyone) not nailed down to the floor. Steve saw cracks slithering across the walls and ceiling in the instant before the lights flickered out. A sour, gritty dust fluttered down over Steve's face, thickening air already taut with the reek of blood, bleach, scared omegas, and him. 

Steve roared between his teeth and heaved the full strength of his rage against the table in the darkness. Someone cursed. Someone sobbed. Someone knocked something clattering to the floor. Steve heard the charging whine of a stun baton coming online, counterpoint to the frantic hiss of someone else telling him to put it the fuck away. He kept pulling against the clamps, ignoring the blood welling up between flesh and steel, ignoring everything except the need to free himself, and to fight his way back to the light, back to his pack, back _home_!

A comm unit crackled loudly to life, stilling the whimpers, the curses, the coughing into sharp, silent focus. "All Personnel!" the base commander's voice filled the hush just as scarlet emergency lights cracked the darkness apart. "Chemical Code Orange, I repeat, Chem Code Orange! Omegas, report to your mustering points for protective gear, and proceed topside at once!"

"Fuck!"

"They Hazed us?"

"Sonofa _bitch_!" 

"Enough!" The doctor snapped, no trace of chummy comfort left in his voice as he shoved the hypospray at another of the nurses. "We have orders! MPs, get topside, now. Hooper, get another fifty of Xyladine into the Captain. Dacy and Roccio, prep the gurney. Seames, wipe your goddamned face off and prep for blood draw."

"But Major, the muster-"

Steve felt the cuff on his right arm begin to tear, blood slicking his wrist against the metal's bite.  
The doctor rounded on his aide, teeth bared. "Did. I. Stutter?"

Another one tried, "Sir, the alphas will need-"

"The alphas will _fight_ , Corporal," The doctor snatched the hypospray back. "Rut haze or no, they'll fight. That's what we keep them around for, now get that man unconscious, or I will-"

The cuff on Steve's wrist parted. Steve shoved upright, batting the doctor and his drugs aside without really thinking about it. The man spun like a top, clipping two rolling tables, an MP's stun baton, and a cabinet on his way down. Steve dug both hands into the clamp just above his knee, and began to _twist_ as the room erupted into chaos again. 

"Captain!"

The clamp shivered, slick in his hands. His shoulder burned where the bullet had gone through, his arm throbbing around the stressed bones and ruptured tissue. Pain rose thick into his throat, tickled his lungs with the urge to cough, to retch against the scents of sweat, panic, dust, and sex filling up the room. 

He didn't. He kept tugging instead.

"Captain Rogers, stop." There was a click. Bullet into chamber, hammer shoved back by the slide. The same tune it had been seventy years ago in Europe, just in a slicker, more complicated key.

Steve stopped tugging and looked up with a, snarl.

The green eyed nurse, the one with the boyish face and the bloody nose, had a gun in both hands, sighting carefully along the barrel to Steve's forehead. He was reeking of terror, but his face was all bloodied determination in the scarlet emergency lights. "We're going," he said, just out of Steve's reach, and shaking just _so_ much as his fellow Oughts hauled the unconscious doctor into the hallway. "But I _will_ shoot you if you don't stay on that table until we're out the door. Do you understand me, Captain?"

Panting, Steve bared his teeth. The Red had him, and hard -- pain, rage, and blood-soaked memories gripped his throat like a fist made of steel. Some wiser part of his brain shoved past the Red to hold him in place though, to keep him from taking the aimed gun as just another level of threat and disrespect -- along with the shackles, the orderlies, the horse tranquilizers, and the rows and rows of empty syringes, just waiting for his blood, as if he hadn't coughed up and bled out enough of that already.

The Avengers had been mustered to protect this research base, to protect these spiteful, sneaking omegas from the AIM assault crew that wanted what they had here. He wasn't here to lie back on its dissection tables because some goon got a lucky shot in, and he damned well was not going to be drugged and contained, and _removed_ for some nameless General's unspoken plans.

But getting shot in the face today wouldn't help get him loose. Steve forced himself to take a deep breath, peeled his fingers away from the leg clamp, stretched them out hard at his sides to keep from making fists as he showed the nurse his teeth, feral and furious. "Get lost!"

They did, slamming the door with a clang that would rival a bank vault the instant they were all clear. Locking Steve in alone with the table, the knives and needles, and the throbbing, bloody light of the emergency beacons. With them went Steve's urge to kill, uncoiling from his sore belly like a mainspring coming loose -- he could almost hear the off-key twang of it in his shaking exhalation. The rage drained away, but in its place, the Red inside Steve filled up with a looser fear, a sore kind of longing -- his pack was still out there, still fighting, still in danger, and here Steve was strapped to a damned table. 

His comm and cowl had been removed while he was still unconscious, his armored jacket cut away, boots and gloves taken from him, and he had no idea where the bastards had hidden his shield. And still, if he'd had the first notion of how to find his way back to the surface, back to the fight his belly knew was still going on, Steve would have limped straight there, barefoot and bleeding the whole way.

Unhampered by the medics, it took him only a few seconds to break free of the shackles. The door was a bigger problem though. A few judicious kicks proved that while on a good day, uninjured, un-drugged, and with the base security on normal standing, Steve would have been able to worry the door open, the hit to the base's power lines had set the thing into full security lockdown. It would take the Hulk, or Tony's repulsors to get through it now.

The room was a concrete box. It had no windows, no dropped ceilings, and the air vent was so small Steve doubted he could have slithered through it even before the serum changed him from a 90 pound, asthmatic omega to a 250 pound meta-alpha super soldier. He was trapped beneath the earth -- he could sense it above him, meters deep or miles, layered in concrete and baffled with warrens, barracks, laboratories, and dear God, even the Red Skull had at least given his prisoners a glimpse of sky through the bars! Steve had no glimpse of sky, no breath of hope; he was alone and lost in a prison of dirt just as solid and pitiless as any of ice.

Still in the grip of the Red, slumped hard against the unyielding door, it was all Steve could do to choke down the urge to _howl_. To bellow and shout, and rage into the dusty crimson air until they found him... but no. His pack weren't close enough to hear, no matter how much noise he might make. He'd hear them, smell them, feel them in his belly, through their new-minted packbond if they were anywhere close. He couldn't waste the energy -- not when he didn't have any way of knowing how long it would take the MPs to come back for him.

He needed to get himself out. He needed a plan. He needed a _weapon._

He had a half-wrecked medical lab with a five by ten air-hole in the roof, a matching drain in the floor, a scrub sink, a silent fridge full of chemicals he couldn't identify, and an entire wall of locked cabinets just over there. He took a breath, and picked his way through the scatter of steel and glass, to begin ripping the doors off the cabinets and rifling them for ideas. 

It was slow going -- the uncertain light, the drugs thrumming in his blood, shaking his hands, wobbling his knees, making his eyes blur and his mind wander. Worst though, was his heart, which couldn't decide whether to race at top speed, or to slow to a crawl, pacing the slow on-off-on of the emergency lights until the room seemed to throb around him like a heart itself. Like when he'd been young, thin, weak -- like when his dodgy heart would knock him down after two flights of stairs, and it seemed like only Bucky's murmur in his ear, and gentle hands on his chest kept Steve anchored to his skin. With every struggling breath, Steve could almost taste Bucky, all bay rum, cheap gin, cordite and clover in the back of his throat.

But Bucky wasn't here, and Steve wasn't so drugged up that he couldn't see through the comforting memory-haze of his first love's scent. His brain was just invoking that scent of home to console him, to counter the Red's wailing confusion and loss, and keep him moving until he could get himself away to safety. To his living pack. To home. 

Steve wasn't in omega phase now -- he'd gone alpha, as he always did, the instant the team took to the battlefield, and so his nose couldn't really be parsing out that kind of detail from the ghost-scent if the real Bucky had somehow been nearby. Steve would never have caught the hard, brittle edge running through it, the hint of melting plastic and scorched tar and ozone if it had been the real man's scent. The drifting dust, medical antiseptic, and lingering fugue of the panicked Ought medics would have buried it completely if the scent had been real. And that thought was the one that did the most to keep him on track, to keep him moving against the urge to wrap himself up in that long-vanished ghost of home, and just _hurt_ for awhile.

"Head in the game, Rogers," he reminded himself, and bent to the task with a will. There were scalpels in the cupboards. Saws, metal clamps and probes that looked more like a mechanic's tools than a doctor's. Needles thick as stilettos, and long enough to reach heart or brain, depending on the angle of strike. There were racks with sharp corners, balanced well enough to fly the length of the room. Good. All of that was good. A blitz attack would get him a gun, or a hostage, or maybe both. 

He was wrapping his feet up in gauze and canvas medical restraints when another boom shook the ground, scattering Steve along with his makeshift arsenal to the floor. Something hard collapsed some distance above him, the clang echoing through the long, angled throat of the air ducting until it was almost a plain, anonymous thud by the time Steve heard it. Almost. But Steve's ears were as sharp as ever, and buried inside that clang was a muttered, vicious curse.

Steve froze where he sprawled, listening; scent memory and tranquilizers warring with adrenaline and instinct to try and bring the threat into view -- to get the shape of it into his head before it consumed him. His blood pounded in his ears, the worse when he held his breath to try and listen, to try and pick up any nearing slither of cloth against steel, any rustling sign of a small, lithe Deuce archer who had a gift for air duct navigation and no goddamned sense of self preservation.

There. A metal scrape -- a snap or an eyelet or a zipper sliding against the thin, polished ducting. A huff of breath, the quiet pop of a snap letting go. It was closer now, all closer.

"Clint?" It wasn't until the whisper bled out of his lips, and the soft, stealthy, barely-there slither of movement stopped cold that Steve knew for sure he'd heard it at all. It wasn't Clint. There was no scent of warm bread and wool, no glitter of razor sweetness running through the hovering haze of Steve's almost-memory. There was no reply to his call but an eerie silence, and a sense -- no, a certainty -- of being sighted in someone's crosshairs. Steve remembered that feeling far too well to doubt it for even a second.

He found his feet in a rush, sweeping his pilfered steel along with him as he put his shoulders hard against the wall beneath the air vent. "Breathe," he murmured over the swimming lurch of his stomach, clinging to the thought that the ducting showed no light, and not even Stark had found a way to shoot around corners. He tried not to imagine what one grenade, tossed in from above would do to him in this shelterless space. "Just breathe, punk..."

"Steve?" A man's voice; distant, quiet, barely a whisper...confused? 

He locked his teeth hard, clenched his eyes closed, and did not, _did not_ whimper the name that rose to his lips. "Focus, Rogers," he ground instead, scalpels fanned between the knuckles of his shaking right fist, "Keep it together..."

"Steve!"

The door across the room clanged in its frame, startling breath into Steve in a loud, ragged sob even as the Red surged back up from his guts in a wash of pure rage. He cocked back his fist as the door clanged again and dust rattled from the wall around, prepared to hurl the scalpels into whatever face presented itself. But the door held, and the curse that followed it was nothing less than Tony Stark at his gutter-mouthed best.

"Come on, you cockswilling ass canker, OPEN!" 

"Tony..." Steve didn't mean to yelp, but he couldn't help it, any more than he could resist the sudden surge of elation that had his heart leaping into a gallop inside his chest. 

The thudding stopped all at once. "Oh, thank Fuck, you're awake. Look, babe I need you to get back from the door." the tinny modulation failed to mask the urgency behind that muffled voice. "This bitch's passcode reader is shot to hell. I have to blast it."

"Tony?" Another clang sounded overhead, a rumpling, tearing sound. Steve clenched the scalpels tighter. "Tony, the team. Where are-"

"Topside, Cap," came the instant reply. "And they're fine. AIM's on the run, and it's all over bar the mopping up, but you and me, we gotta get outta here, babe. Like yesterday. So get some cover, okay?"

Another rending crunch sounded from above as Steve slid along the wall to the corner. "Go!" he called, and covered his face with his free hand.

The door came in with a blast, a clattering crash and a cloud of dust, buckled inward around its six steel bars, and still glowing orange where Tony's repulsors had focused their wrath. It spun and rocked along its carpet of shattered stone and steel, but Steve paid it only enough attention to jump over it and charge straight into Iron Man's arms. He caught the armor around the waist and hefted without slowing, half lifting, half dragging as he bore the brilliant, cocky, precious omega to the safety of opposite wall.

"Whoa there, Capslock!" Tony grunted, faceplate flipping up to reveal is sweaty, anxious face, and the edgy, bright, almost-panic that Iron Man's voice modulator had scraped from his voice. "Easy, Ace!" Fear and anger and sex spiked his normal battle-sweat-and-metal scent, but his armored hand was gentle as he ruffled the hair at the back of Steve's head. "I know you're ruttish, but we gotta go now. Think you can keep it in your pants till we get somewhere safe?"

"M'not in rut," Steve rumbled, nosing hard at Tony's cheek, trying to push past the helmet's padding so he could just lean into the sweaty, sooty, filthy, utterly perfect hollow behind his ear, and know -- _know_ \-- that he was all right. "There's someone in the-"

"Babe, every alpha on this base is hazed half out of his mind right now," Tony murmured, curling his other hand over the heated swell of Steve's injured shoulder. The careful weight was a strange sort of comfort, for all it made the wound throb. "Airborne chemical agent. AIM's parting gift to cover their retreat. Even this far underground, you're smelling it." Tony scruffed Steve just hard enough to pry his face out of the helmet's crease and tilt it into a kiss. "You're suppressing so hard against it you're giving the _rest_ of us your headache."

"I don't," He hadn't noticed the headache. Steve nuzzled in for another kiss, ignoring Tony's grip on his hair, and the awkward angle of the helmet's jutting faceplate. "I'm not..." he whined, "There was... something in the air ducts." He licked the sweat from Tony's cheek since the helmet blocked him from anything better. "They drugged me."

"I know." There was cold steel in Tony's answer, though the grip of his gauntlets as he pulled Steve away again was gentle and smooth. "I know they did, and it's only gonna get worse as the haze works its way down. If the ventilation fans were online right now, you'd be past the point of talking, babe." He smoothed at Steve's sweaty temple with one hand while working under his own chin for the helmet's clasp with the other. 

"But that's why you gotta trust me to get you out, okay, Cap?" He pulled the helmet off with a lewd suctioning sound that spiked his dark hair into crazy, sweaty patterns. Steve leaned in again, wanting to taste now that Tony's cinnamon candy copper penny sun warmed cedar scent wafted into the air, undaunted by cologne, grime, or the sweat of battle; wanting to lick the strong column of Tony's throat, nuzzle hard against the damp, fragrant glands beneath his ear. But Tony's grip on his neck didn't yield, turning Steve's face toward the empty helmet instead. "Steve. Babe. Put this on, okay? For me? Let your Ought take care of you this time?"

Steve blinked at the helmet, Tony's words filtering through the haze of drug and pain and fearrelieflongingfear that throbbed through his veins. Chemical agent. Something in the vents. Gas. Alphas in rut. "You... you need it," he said. The helmet filtered things like that out. Tony wouldn't be safe if he gave the helmet to Steve.

Tony shook his head though, his eyes wide and dark in the pulsing scarlet light. "Haze doesn't work that way, babe. It's only you Aces that feel it. The only danger to an Ought like me is from all those alphas up there in rut-frenzy, which," Tony tilted Steve's head so their foreheads could rest firmly together. "Which you won't be, because you're gonna put the helmet on, and let me get us out of here before that happens, right?"

Steve took a breath. The melting tar and brick dust smell was thicker now, layered in with that almost-Bucky scent he'd told himself he was imagining before. His memory idly reminded him of a camp in Austria, of pheromones in the wind that Jim, Gabe, and Bucky all swore smelled like Bucky himself was down in that valley, in that prison. He hadn't been, but Zola had.

In the room behind them, something metal clattered to the ground, light enough to be noisy as it rattled off the mess Steve had made in his escape, light enough to ignore as threats went, but still. There was something in the vents.

"We... we gotta go," Steve groaned, letting Tony's legs thud to the ground, and urging him backward along the wall. "The team. We gotta get them and-"

"The team's _fine,_ Steve," Tony answered, not letting Steve back away. "You and me, we're the only ones at risk here. They'll be safe, as long as they don't have to come rescue _us_ from this black-ops shit-hole. Now just hold still and..." And he shoved the red and gold helmet down over Steve's head, snapping the faceplate closed as soon as the joints of the thing had finished molding around Steve's cheeks and jaw.

The rush of air through the filters was warm, sterile, and instant, and thankfully for Steve's temper, it did nothing to erase the solid wall of Tonyscent that permeated the helmet around him. Or the sense of security, of _home_ that the scent brought with it. He closed his eyes against the sudden glitter of Jarvis' display and breathed the omega's odor in deep, promising himself that it would be okay.

"Jarvis, can you monitor Cap's bio systems from there?" Tony asked, hefting Steve's good arm up over his shoulder and nudging his bandaged foot with the repulsor boot until Steve stepped up onto it.

"I can achieve some rudimentary monitoring, based on-" 

"Good," Tony cut in, "Do it. Warn me if there's trouble, 'cause I know he sure as fuck won't say anything."  
Steve didn't think that was fair, but he let it pass, focusing instead on clinging to the subtle ridges of the armor as Tony half turned, crowding Steve between his armored side and the wall to aim his other repulsor gauntlet at the floor. Steve watched the ruby shine of the emergency light as it skated along the sweat-gleam of Tony's face, so bright it seemed to coalesce at his temple. A single scarlet mote, like a firefly that clung in place as he grinned at Steve and asked, "You ready to blow this pop-stand now, Cap?" 

And then he blasted the floor beneath their feet into rubble before Steve could say a word, could swat away that mote of light, could even brace himself. 

And then they were falling. 

Steve yelped and clung as they pitched downward into a vast, echoing darkness. The concrete and rebar fell away from them as the armor's boots fired to stabilize, then halt their fall, and Steve blinked as the helmet's infrared cameras resolved the blackness into some kind of massive underground aircraft hangar. 

"There," he said, pointing at a low line of lights that streamed between the silent, hulking aircraft, leading the way toward a longer, deeper blackness that Jarvis helpfully labeled in green. "Launchway. See it?"

"Gotcha," Tony grinned, drifting low, so the faint, battery gleam could guide his unaided eyes. "Hang on, Cap. We are outta here!" 

And unable to do much else, Steve hung on, close and small as he could get against the slipstream of cold and darkness and cruelly artificial memories. He focused instead on suppressing the ache of his shoulder, suppressing the fretfulness over his missing shield, and on thinking of his pack, alive and together, and untroubled by haunting motes of scarlet light that made his guts knot up with helpless, half-reasoned fear.

*

Tony didn't need Jarvis' warning to notice it the moment Cap lost adhesion. A sudden, heavy sag of the weight that had been tucked up tight beneath his arm; a lurching shift of balance as gravity fought with velocity to determine what would happen to them next; a half-voiced whimper that the Iron Man helmet's modulation couldn't wring free of pain. All unmistakable signs of Super Soldier Consciousness Failure. They lost a quick twenty feet of altitude, and as much forward velocity as Tony felt he could dump midair without stalling, but then Cap shook his faint off with a grunt and a curse.

"Sir," Jarvis co-opted the helmet's speech modulator for Tony's benefit. "You are one point five miles northwest of the Quinjet landing site. I believe you should direct your flight there at best possible speed."

"Lemme guess; Cap's not gonna make it back to the City like this," Tony gritted, squinting into the wind, and decidedly not looking at the dark smudge of orange -- dust and smoke and chemical madness -- that was hanging like an autumn mist in the valley behind them.

"I'm fine," Steve's voice was his own despite the metallic modulations -- worn and flat and leaden with exhaustion, but still rumbling thick in his chest. Tony could tell from the subtle, repetitious shifts in Steve's balance that if there hadn't been the armor between them, he'd have been treated to the feel of the alpha's half-knotted erection frotting against his thigh. Or perhaps somewhere moister and more satisfying for them both, and Jesus -- time and place, Stark!

"You're not fine, babe," Tony sassed gently back, digging armored fingers around Steve's ribs to hike him in tighter to his side. "You're shot, you're leaking, and you're about three unfiltered breaths from the rut of your life. This isn't gonna be a hearts and flowers affair, I hope you realize that."

"Not an animal..." Steve growled, his hips rhythmically not getting the message as Tony boosted them all the faster over the ridgeline. 

"Good," Tony answered. "'Cause I don't fuck animals. Rut-hot alphas, those are definitely on my menu." Especially when the alpha in question, thanks to the super serum in his veins, could slide between all phases of human male sexual presentation, becoming alpha, beta, omega, or even null at will. And _most_ especially when said meta-alpha had just recently bonded the entire team into the tightest, most seamless family pack any of them had ever imagined. For weeks now, Tony had been yearning for a chance to have a go at Cap without having to share him with the others, and he most definitely was not above turning a combat consequence to his advantage in that aim.

"Look, there's the Quinjet right up there," he said, distracting Steve from the argument as he swerved around a tall stand of pines to get a sightline on the clearing where they'd parked. The holographic camouflage and the streaming wind conspired to hide the thing from Tony's eyes, but he knew the helmet's HUD would show it to Steve just fine. "Almost home free, Cap."

Steve didn't answer, but Tony felt his grip around the armor's backplate clamp down harder, and a rattling kind of growl came out of the voice modulator before Jarvis took it over.

"Sir, it appears that Prince Odinson and Agent Barton have returned to the Quinjet before us." He said as Tony slowed their flight and descended toward a smaller clearing. "The Captain's biometric readings are showing an increase in skin temperature and muscle tension, and pupil constriction indicating-"

"I'm _fine_!" Steve snarled, and shoved himself out of Tonys grip altogether, tumbling like a stone to the ground. It wasn't much of a fall -- Cap had certainly dived off higher places -- but something inside Tony clenched up tight and horrified at the pained grunt Steve made when the forest floor leapt up to meet him. A second later, he'd wrenched the helmet off and slung it back upward, almost more _at_ Tony than _to_ him. "You go ahead. Make sure they're okay. I'll be-"

"Yeah, I heard you; Fine," Tony griped back, lurching to catch the helmet, and then dropping to the ground himself. "Only you're about three quarters of a mile and one wind shift away from being not fine at all, and you know it!" Cap's look was equal parts mutinous, skittish, and starving, and it hit Tony somewhere squarely in between his desire to whack the man, cuddle him, or fuck him stupid. 

He pointed in the direction of the Quinjet, and the betae waiting for them there. "They, however, actually _are_ fine. The chemical has no effect on them, and neither of them's hurt -- I can tell that through the bond, and you could be too, if you weren't fuck-mad right now!" He stepped closer, reached a hand toward Steve. Then, as the alpha lurched back out of his reach, he snarled. "Damn it, what the hell are you afraid of?"

"I don't-" Steve took another step back, stumbling over upthrust roots until his stagger fetched him up against a sturdy pine. He gripped the bark with both hands behind him, as if wishing he could dig his fingers in. "I don't want to hurt you," he whispered, lips pale in his flushed, sweaty face.

Tony considered him for a moment, then bent to set his helmet on the ground. "Then don't hurt me," he answered, pressing the manual release and stepping free of the armor as it sprung open around him. Steve panted, his eyes darkening as the scent of Tony's sweat reached him, made him crane toward the source even as his fingers dug harder at the tree.

"Tony..." he moaned, sucking air over his tongue and teeth like he couldn't help himself.

"Come on, babe," Tony answered him, sidling up in an unmistakable dare. "You know me; I'm Tony Stark, and what's more, I'm your very own Ought. You know I can take you."

Steve closed his eyes. "B-Bruce," he tried, as if invoking the other pack alpha with whom he shared Tony would somehow drive the Red from his brain and balls.

Tony smirked and stepped in closer, so that Steve's face hung just inches from his sweaty throat. "Bruce isn't home right now," he purred, "and you know the Hulk's completely null anyway. Last I saw of them, he and Natasha were playing Whack-An-Ace back down in the haze-cloud." Tony slid one hand around the back of Steve's neck, fingers teasing over corded muscle and fine, sweaty hair as he whispered, "They're just fine without us, babe."

Steve shuddered at the touch, arching up hard as Tony's nails scratched over his bond-gland. And then, with a ragged groan, he broke, snatched Tony close against him, and held on as they toppled to the ground in a tangle of need and teeth and elbows. Tony whooped and held on for the ride as gravity had her way with them, and Steve ignored every thump and jolt and tree root and stone in favor of sucking Tony's tongue into his mouth and not letting it go.

And oh, yes, that was it. The taste of Steve, the smell of him burst over Tony's brain like the best kind of high; the smooth cream and salty-sweet caramel of his normal scent spiked up with something sharp, resinous and wild as he grunted and tore at Tony's clothes to get at the skin beneath. Tony groaned, slickening as Steve's big, square paw found its way into his pants, and his rough, devouring kisses slipped from his mouth to mark his jaw and throat and chest with heat. "Christ, Cap," he sighed, arching up as Steve's teeth found a nipple and his hands yanked Tony's pants down from his hips, "wanna do it right here? Right on the ground?" He spread, kicking free of shoes and shorts to eagerly present his wetness as Steve lifted off him to snuffle down his belly.

It was a bad idea -- a terrible one really. There were branches and roots poking up at him, bugs probably sizing his vulnerable skin up for a feast, and pine needles everywhere, just waiting to get caught in tender crevasses. The wind could shift at any moment, bringing AIM's haze over them like a hammer to the hindbrain, smashing Steve fully down into caveman mode, super strength and all. Worse, one of the base's rutting alphas could actually wander free of the melee, smell what they were doing, and follow his cock to this little forest bower of theirs. If any alpha alive could win a pitched battle while actively knotted with an omega, Cap would be the one, but really that didn't win the notion a place on Tony's bucket list.

But oh damn, when Steve licked a molten stripe up the length of Tony's leaking prick, when his fingers delved between Tony's cheeks to wet themselves in slick and rub their way inside, it was damned hard to imagine having the strength to tell his alpha to back off and walk another half mile. Not when he'd been ready to go hide in the woods and tough out his rut alone half a minute ago, and no. Just no. Nope all the way. The idea of a good, authentic, gritty, filthy junglefuck was rapidly overwhelming every last reason Tony could think of not to grind himself down on Steve's fingers and whine for more.

"God," Steve mumbled, hunched low and pressing his face into the slick, sweaty crease of Tony's inner thigh. "God, Tony I want... " He fumbled, one handed between his own legs, and Tony heard fabric tear before a zip reached his ears. 

"Yeah," Tony gulped, rolling his hips up as Steve's fingers pulled free and his arms tugged at Tony's thighs. "Fuck yeah, I want too. Just-" 

And that was where his words failed him. Because Steve didn't loom over him, didn't slam that gorgeous, half-knotted prick into Tony oh, so ready body. Instead, he kept lifting, hiking Tony's weight entirely onto his shoulders so that he could get his mouth to Tony's entrance and _lick_ , and no one, literally no one, alpha, omega, or otherwise in Tony's long and varied sexual history, had _ever_ done that. 

Tony gurgled a noise that sounded _nothing_ like a squeal, thank you, and might have drummed his heels on Steve's back just a little, just for a moment or two before melting into the amazing sensation. Steve didn't seem to notice. His thumbs just dug the harder at Tony's ass, pulling muscle and meat out of the way to give his tongue more room to work its way inside. The noises Steve made were filthy; wet and hungry and visceral, peppered with tiny, urgent grunts as he licked and sucked and made Tony's eyes cross with unexpected pleasure.

Tony's cock lurched in the air above him, proud and scarlet and dripping a steady stream of precome. A single, fluid thread hung like spider silk through the empty air between his cockhead and his heaving chest, lit silver by the arc reactor's glow. "Fuck, Steve you can't make me come like this," he gulped, gathering up the precome with one hand and grabbing his prick, breaking that last, slick link just in time for another long, pale gush to slip free and spin its way gently down. "Don't make me come empty, babe. Don't let me lock up without your fat knot inside me!"

Steve rumbled, a low, seismic sound that was half warning growl, and half possessive purr. "Don't come yet," he pulled away just far enough to say, his flushed cheeks gleaming with Tony's slick, "I want more." And with that, he dove back in, tongue driving and thrusting like he wanted to get every trace, every nuance of Tony's flavor.

Tony keened, reeling from the sensation, greedy for more, for harder, for deeper, bigger, _fuller_ , but that tiny, well-buried sliver of his mind that always wanted to be good, to be sweet, and to make his alpha happy, clung desperately to restraint instead. He let go of his cock -- too much of a risk, touching it like that -- and strained to get his hands into Steve's hair instead, clutching and tugging and doing his level best to distract himself from the unbearable want that was towering up high and threatening to swamp him with every swipe of Steve Goddamned Roger's Goddamned Fucking Marvelous Tongue.

"In, in, in," Tony chanted it with every pleading breath, out of his head with the need to come. He noticed, peripherally, that there was something happening not too far away -- a crashing in the trees, shouting -- but he didn't care, _couldn't_ care with Steve's face buried between his cheeks, and Steve's damned no-orgasm order hanging over his head like an anvil. "Please, Steve," he whined as his cock gave up another eager spurt of precome, "in me now, _please!_ "

Then thunder cracked the air, and Steve yanked his face away, leaving gold strands of his hair tangled in Tony's fingers as he dropped his hold on the omega and surged snarling to his knees. He was fully in the Red now, even without the haze, and as likely to kill another alpha, or any male not bound into his own pack, as to look at him.

"NO!" Tony yelped, lurching up after Steve before he could shove farther away, catching one corded arm and dragging on it with all his weight. "It's Thor," he gulped, struggling up to his knees. "Steve, Thor's ours, remember? He's ours, and he's strong, and he loves you, and whatever's happening over there, he can handle it!" Tony spread his hands out over Steve's ribs, his tight-clenched belly, trying to calm the man, trying to bring him back. "Let him handle it, him and Barton," Tony leaned in close to murmur against the swell of Steve's chest, pulse jumping against the press of his lips. "Stay here with me, ok babe?"

One of Steve's hands lifted to Tony's waist, curling tight. The growl hadn't left his chest but his breathing slowed after a moment, and he no longer vibrated with menace. He turned his face down into Tony's neck and shuddered to take in a breath that felt like it went on forever. Then his lips moved, dragging over the gritty, sweat-sticky skin of Tony's throat. "...gauntlets," he said.

Tony blinked. "Uh..."

"Gauntlets," Steve said again, and bodily turned Tony toward the pile of discarded armor. Then he sat down on his ass with a thump and a grunt, cock still jutting up, scarlet and hard behind his braced knees. "Put em on." He swallowed, set his shoulders to the tree, and eyed Tony hungrily. "Then c'mere."

"Yyyeah, kind of a weird kink there, but okay, sure, whatever you want," Tony muttered, even as he scrambled to obey. The shouting behind the trees had become the quiet murmur of conversation, and Tony was pretty sure, as he fumbled the articulated metal over his hands, that one of those voices was Barton's. 

"Ranged weapon," Steve answered, one hand fisting slowly up and down the length of his erection while he wiped Tony's slick from his face on the back of the other arm. "Now come. Here."

And really, no order could have suited him better, but even horny and high on hormones, Tony was still _Tony_ , after all. He gave Steve a saucy look, all eyebrow and attitude, then dropped to all fours to slink across the clearing, taking his time and giving way too much eyeball along the way. Any other alpha that close to Red would have spun up at the challenge of it, but Tony could feel only amusement along the bond that sizzled between them -- amusement and fondness, and a burning hunger that made his spine shiver and his ass clench, slick and empty as he went.

"Brat," Steve growled, scruffing him in as soon as Tony sauntered into his reach, and setting a bite -- a gentle one, considering, -- to the side of his throat.

"Obedient," Tony protested, laughing. Then Steve lifted him around, back to chest, and knees between Steve's spread thighs. Tony pitched forward under the pressure of a hand between his shoulders, getting the idea, and loving it perhaps more than was reasonable. "Oh, fuck yeah," he sighed as Steve's fingers hooked easily into his hole and guided his hips into position. "You have the best plans, Cap..."

Then Tony was spreading around the thick weight, sinking down and opening up and taking all that heat and hunger and power in, and in, and in forever. He dragged up fistfuls of pine needles, clenched them to powder as he felt the swell of Steve's knot finally stop his long descent -- a threat and a promise against the hungry clasp of his body. And then Steve's hands were at his ribs, pulling him back, tilting him upright so that massive cock inside him made him see stars. 

"Tony?" Steve rumbled, sprung taut beneath him, waiting.

"Yeah," Tony answered, as he brought his arms -- shaking only a little -- up into guard position. "yeah, I got this." Whether he could _keep_ it through the impending fucking, though, was another question, and one that Tony was hoping wouldn't require an actual answer. But then Barton's voice rang out from the high tree cover behind them, amused and annoyed in equal measure.

"Oh for god's sake, Stark," he yelled as Steve and Tony both lurched in surprise, "Put those down before you hurt yourself! Cap, we got your perimeter, Thor and me, so would you just _fuck_ him so we can go home already?"

Which, as plans went, was even better.

"Somebody's jealous," Tony smirked over his shoulder as he wriggled his hands free of the gauntlets and let them fall. Steve's brows were low and threatening, but his big hands curled over his hips as Tony shimmied them snugly down with an appreciative groan and added, "Wanna make him jealouser?"

"That's not even a word!" Barton yelled back.

But at that point, neither of them was listening to him anymore.

~*~

Tempting as it was to keep up a play by play commentary over the comms for the benefit of the rest of the team, Clint restrained the urge.

He was _pretty_ sure Steve was more into getting a slice of what Stark was offering than he would have been into chasing one smart-mouthed beta down for an ass kicking that he might, or might not deserve, but Stark was well known for being one vindictive bitch when he thought the joke might be on him. And Jarvis gave the man one hell of an unfair advantage where prank wars were concerned.

And then there was Coulson to consider too. That was really the tipping point, if Clint was gonna be honest about it.

So instead of narrating the bump and grind going on in the clearing, Clint focused on rounding up the uncoupled members of his pack like the sensible beta he always tried to insist he was capable of being.

"Widow?" he called, patrolling out a perimeter around the Quinjet, where Thor was minding their prisoner, and the clearing, where Cap was minding the hell out of Stark. "You got a report for me? Cos dispatch really wants to get a cleanup crew in here before the wind picks up and turns this little clusterfuck into a regional event, and I think they're getting tired of me stalling them."

Somewhere in the middle distance, the Hulk roared, and smashed something that made a lot of noise and a small fireball when it went down. He sounded like he was having fun, at least.

Clint's comm crackled as Natasha's voice buzzed against his cheekbone. "Found Cap's shield and part of his uniform. There's one hell of a collapse between me and the medbay, so we'll have to hope they didn't get too many blood samples. We can clear out as soon as you prep the 'jet and Cap calls off the Hulk."

Another explosion, this one felt as much as heard, and passing the clearing where Steve and Tony were making almost as much noise, Clint had to grimace. "Umm, about that last part; Cap's kinda distracted at the moment." He peeked around a tree and shook his head. "Yeah, nope. He's not going anywhere for awhile. Got a backup plan?"

She swore in Russian, jolting and huffing as masonry thudded around her. "Anything that gets me a decon shower?" she offered after a moment and another small explosion. "I'm covered in this orange powder, and it smells like sweaty socks and an omega gang bang. I'm really not loving the idea of Dr. Banner being covered in this stuff when he comes to, either."

"No we do not love that idea at all," Clint agreed, and tapped twice on his earpiece to shift channels. "Hey Thor, if I come back and take over prisoner duty, think you can scare up a localized rainstorm down in that valley?"

"Indeed I can," Thor answered at once, and the hammer's fwipfwipfwip began to sound over the comm. "But you needn't trouble yourself for the prisoner -- he is quite secure. Stand you watch over our Shieldmates instead." And then he was up and away, a red and silver streak through the trees, and a sudden shift in air pressure that made Clint's good ear pop painfully.

"Aw, ear," he complained around a yawn as he headed back toward the Quinjet for the official Avengers 'break glass in case of naked' kit. It held sweats and towels, thermal blankets, socks, undies and spare shoes enough for the whole team, all of which, between the imminent shower and alpha-rut sexytimes, it was beginning to look like they'd need. Not to mention the med kit for Steve, and a crate of wet naps for Stark, if the comm chatter had been anything like accurate.

Arriving at the Quinjet though, Clint had to laugh. Thor had cut the alpha prisoner mostly free of the arrow net they'd hauled him there in, (and free of quite a bit of his uniform too, Clint was amused to note,) but he'd taken several of the longest lines and essentially spit-tied the guy to a sapling that was just thick enough to bend under the man's dead weight but not break... so long as he didn't thrash too much. He hung face down and drooling, two feet from the dirt like a deer trussed for roasting -- he was even still steaming where Thor's tiny little lightning strike had laid the law down on him. 

Clint gave the guy a companionable kick on his way past.

Both directions, because hey -- it's the little joys, right?

Stark and the Cap were just about finished by the time Clint made it back with the clothes. True to his word, Thor kept the deluge to the other side of the ridgeline, but it still stirred up a viciously cold wind as it pounded the hazing agent down into the mud. Much too chilly for a post-knotting nap, Clint thought, thought it sure as hell looked like Steve was giving it a try. Tony wasn't letting him though, which, good sense points to Tony for that one. 

"Come on, babe," he was gritting, straining with one arm to reach his pants from the confines of Steve's possessive cuddle. "Seriously, chiggers, Steve. Chiggers are a _thing_!"

"Nah, not really," Clint answered, sidling into the clearing to toss him a pair of the sweats. "Not this far north. Too cold up here. Now Blackflies..."

"You're hilarious," Tony gritted, but whatever else he might've said trailed off into a wary silence as Steve growled, thunderous and menacing in his sleep. "Look, uh, maybe now isn't..."

"Going, yeah," Clint agreed, backing away, and wondering when, exactly, his self preservation instinct had checked out enough for him to have found that warning growl charming instead of terrifying. It was probably Stark's fault, he decided as he headed out to take another perimeter patrol. The man's cheeky flirtation with alpha temperament seemed to be wearing off on them all. Good thing their alphas were the patient sort.

When Clint finished his circuit, Iron Man was waiting for him at the Quinjet with Captain America draped over his arms like a very drunk and barely dressed princess.

"Figured there was no way Mohammad was coming to this mountain anytime soon," Tony sniffed in answer to Clint's chuckle, then he tipped a nod at the Quinjet's closed hatch. "Why's she locked up?"

"'Cause 'a him," Clint answered with a nod of his own as he stepped past to key in his security code. Tony turned, following the gesture, and his eyes bugged wide as he saw the alpha in the tree.

"Is that..." he half turned, nearly clipping Steve's head on the descending ramp. "Jesus, Barton, is that General Ross?"

"Nope," Clint answered, and gave Stark a shove. "Now get Cap inside before he wakes up cranky, okay?" 

"Seriously, it's him," Stark protested, still staring backward even as he carried Steve into the Quinjet's hold. "You know how many times I had to get that asshole drunk at titty bars back when SI did Army contracts? I'd know that mustache anywhere!"

"Well you wouldn't know it here, apparently," Clint sniped back, yanking the bunk rack down from the wall and lifting Steve's feet up onto it as Stark laid him out, "because that _isn't_ General Ross." He turned, finger first to cut off the next protest. "Because the facility roster had General Thaddeus Ross off base this entire week, meeting with contractors in Atlantic City. And if he _did_ for some reason come back here instead of staying put in whatever titty bar or casino he was drinking in, then General Thaddeus Ross would _definitely_ not have been enough of a dumbass to order his pilot to break US Army quarantine procedures and land the transport in a chemical hot zone, now would he?"

Stark was grinning now, delight and disbelief playing across his features like he couldn't decide whether it was his birthday, or April Fool's. Clint schooled his face to prim sobriety, or something like it. "No, see _this_ ," he swept an arm back toward the beleaguered tree, "is just some hazed-up, rut-happy alpha meathead who wandered up from the quarantine zone and came sniffing after the Avengers' power couple while they were indisposed." He gave a beat, and then a gracious nod. "You're welcome."

Tony barked out a laugh, sudden and startled and loud. 

"Mph!" Steve jolted awake, but only barely. "Tony?" he mumbled, groping with one hand and squinting, "'R you 'k?"

"Fine, Cap," Stark purred, catching Steve's hand and tucking it back under the blanket. "I'm just fine. We're safe, the team's safe, and my presumed consent is very much intact."

"'ucky?" Steve fretted, still trying to hang on. Clint had to shrug when Stark gave him a questioning look, because fucked if he had any idea what that meant. Probably the drugs, the haze, and the endorphins talking.

"Uh, yeah. We're all lucky," Stark answered, patting Steve's chest carefully. "You sleep it off now, okay babe? We'll all have a nice cuddle pile once we get home." And give the guy points, because if Steve had been any more put together, Stark talking to him like that would've had the pair of them fighting like an old married couple for the rest of the night. But now Steve just settled down into it, meek as a kitten and just as biddable now the Red had been fucked out of him. Clint was pretty sure he was asleep again before him and Stark had made it back outside.

"Look," Stark said as he began to remove his armor for the second time that afternoon, "d'you think we can just not tell Cap about this?" No question which 'this' he meant, either, given his gleeful stare at Sir Not Lightning-Proof and his Stripey Underpants. "I mean you know what a stickler Steve is about chain of command and all that bullshit."

"Well technically," Clint answered, hopping up on the Quinjet's wing to eye the flash of crimson that was coming in low and fast over the trees, "It was Thor's bag. I only kept him from hitting the ground too hard after he was out."

"And Prince _does_ outrank General," Stark nodded, catching on with a grin.

"And concussed outranks dead too, which is what he'da got if he'd managed to get up on Cap back there," Clint felt obliged to point out. Neither one of them needed to mention the nasty stain there would've been if the Hulk had been the one to notice him first. Not enough PR spin in the world to mop that one up.

"Fair point," Stark conceded as Thor dropped into other side of the clearing, Banner shivering like a half-drowned dog in his arms, Natasha clinging like a soggy, pissed off monkey to his cape. "But let's still not stress Cap about that little detail, okay?" 

He stuck out his hand, and Clint considered it for two seconds longer than was strictly necessary. Then he grabbed it and shook. 

"Deal," he answered, beaming a smile that made it plain in the silent fashion of spies everywhere that Someone Else had just volunteered to file the after action report.

**Author's Note:**

> This story should stand on its own, but there's definitely a nuance of plot that will be enhanced if readers have already read _Changeling_ , the previous story in this series. 
> 
> If any of the world building details confuse you, I took some pains to lay them out in the final chapter of that fic.
> 
> And yeah, I have plans for more. Pinky swear.  
> Comments are love!


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